The report – B-M’s third such annual report – includes a wealth of insight into global companies’ use of social media and how that use is evolving from broadcasting to engagement to content creation, giving credible validation to the emerging notion of the organization as a media company.

Each corporate Facebook page has an average of 6,101 people talking about it.

More than the interpreted data, though, what’s really interesting to me is seeing how the growth in use of all channels parallels how the channels themselves have developed and evolved during the past three years.

Add to that the way in which more companies recognize the social web as a legitimate business tool and an effective one for engaging with different stakeholders, that’s reflected in how those companies are evolving how they use the various tools and channels.

What’s especially interesting is the leap in usage of YouTube in 2012 compared to 2011, up from 57 percent to 79 percent of the Global 100 (which I make a 23 percent increase rather than the 39 percent B-M mentions in the slide), clearly supporting data from researchers such as comScore about the explosive growth of online video in business.

[…] Actionable insights from Burson-Marsteller on the Global 100 and the social web If you were to guess which has been the preferred social channel of the top 100 global companies in the Fortune 500 list over the past three years, you’d be spot on if you said Twitter. That’s what re… […]

What to Expect

Perspectives at the intersection of business, communication and technology.

When the only certainty is change, communicator, blogger and podcaster Neville Hobson analyses and discusses trends, behaviours and practices in digital communication to help you understand what they mean for people and organizations.